After our usual breakfast, the car rental guy picked us up and took us to Mr Motors. He agreed to pick the car up from the Ferry Lot by MacDonald Castle tomorrow evening so we didn’t have to hitch back down there. I remembered Chris’ trick of “keep left” while driving. I thought I’d be ok as long as we avoid congested areas (which are only in Portree). Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the roads are very narrow with only one lane in most places so you don’t really have to think much about keeping left.
We first headed north to Uig. It was a cold and rainy day so we just drove around and saw what we could without getting out of the car. The mountains on the Isle of Skye aren’t very high, but they are very dramatic because they come right out of the ocean to 2000’+. We made our way to the north coast and stopped at the Skye Museum of Island Life. It had stopped raining enough for us to get out and look around. Next we headed back down the west coast into Portree. We stopped at some overlooks of the west coast and the formation of Old Man of Storr but it started raining on us again so we didn’t go very far up the trail to the Old Man. We stopped in Portree for some coffee and a meal then made our way across the island to the south east coast.
We ended up out at Neist Pointe Lighthouse. We were driving down what we thought were roads rarely used to only end up at a crowded parking lot. We walked out to the lighthouse and imagined staying there in a storm. The lighthouse has been converted into a bed and a breakfast and it was raining steady now so imagining a storm didn’t require a lot of imagination. On our way south, we ran by The Three Chimneys Restaurant where the English couple we had dinner with at the Drovers Inn were going for their anniversary dinner. They had to make reservations over a year in advance. We stopped to look at the menu and were amazed at this 5 star restaurant and retreat on a back road of the Isle of Skye. Our last stop of the drive was at the Talisker Distillery. By this time, they were getting close to closing so we opted to skip the tour and tasting since I didn’t want to hear Pam have another hairball.
The real goal of our trip to the Isle of Skye was to go to the very colorful and enchanting Fairy Pools. To that end, we drove down into the Brittle Forest to go camping for the night on the beach at the end of the road. We drove all the way to the end of the road and it was raining harder and it was getting cold. On the way in, we had passed the Glenbrittle Hostel, so we decided to drive back a few miles to see if we could possibly get in there for the night. When we got there, it wasn’t officially open for the evening yet, but we talked to some people waiting that said there was space here. We ate our lunch we had bought for tomorrow while we waited for the attendant to open the place up. We were able to get space in the bunk rooms (four days in a row with showers!) so we stayed up as late as possible playing cards (8:30 for us being old and tired). Pam stayed up with the attendant and took care of getting us reservations tomorrow evening in Glasgow at a Holiday Inn using my points for a free room. Around 9:30 she woke me up to get info she needed to complete the reservation and I was very disoriented but she managed to extract what she needed. I was back out before the dorm door closed. It rained and the wind blew hard all night long shaking the building—perfect sleeping weather.